Bureau of Labor Statistics table by way of the New York Times' Economix blog.
Republicans have been making two main arguments about the economy -- that taxes are killing business, and that regulation is killing business. With regard to regulation, former Reagan and elder Bush adviser Bruce Bartlett runs the data today from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and finds companies blaming lack of demand, not surfeit of regulation, for layoffs. He writes:
In my opinion, regulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda supported by the business community year in and year out. In other words, it is a simple case of political opportunism, not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment.
Another report shows that regulation as the primary complaint by businesses has ticked up under the Obama administration, but is still lower than under the first President Bush.
And with regard to taxes, a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities chart below shows that in recent times, tax hikes have at least not gotten in the way.
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New York Times columnist and blogger Paul Krugman has been saying - and documenting - the same thing, and he's been doing it since the financial meltdown sent all of us scurrying under the bed back in 2007-08. The lingering recession and high unemployment is the cause of too little demand, not regulations or taxes or "uncertainty" anything else. People aren't buying because they are scared: Those who still have jobs are afraid they might lose it, and the unemployed are barely scraping by.
My hunch, though, is that none of the member of the Grumpy Old Men (GOP) party will site the Bartlett paper - or the BLS figures. After all, why bother relying in facts when polemics and lies make better sound bites?
Hear, hear! Spot on, Charley James!
I don't know how many times and how many experts have to prove that "Trickle Down" or "Voodoo" Economics does NOT work. Mountains of evidence. The pretty basic rules of supply and demand do. Put the money in the hands of the people and they buy. Put the money in the hands of the big business owners only...and they hoard = no growth, no employment.
Bingo. Econ 101.
Once again, Rachel Maddow has provided facts to support her hypothesis. I'm grateful she has the ability to present information the public needs vs. hyperbole. Thanks, Rachel.
The other thing that was recently pointed out by someone (don't remember who) is that most of the wealthy whose taxes would go up are independent business people, i.e., professionals who are self-employed (doctors, lawyers, actors, athletes). They aren't creating jobs anyway...
Hench the small business cry of the Greed Over Patriotism party.
Don't forget that the POG [1] has redefined "small business" to be any corporation that files taxes under subchapter S. Their average revenues are somewhere in the hundreds of millions, thanks to "small businesses" like Bechtel, Kock Industries, and Price, Waterhouse, Coopers.
[1] Party of God
Republican rule #1: Never let the truth get in the way of a good lie.
Rule #2: A lie travels around the world 10 times while the truth is still tying it's shoe laces.
And the lies do not get scrutiny from the media or the Dems. Make trickle down economics the issue and those lies fall apart when the facts are presented.
I love these posts, but, as usual, the people who need to see it refuse to even look at these charts. My conservative friends who insist over and over that trickle-down works, in the face of enormous piles of facts showing otherwise, are ridiculously pig-headed.
its a cult and they all been programmed.
So your alternative to providing tax incentives to create new businesses is the Robin Hood plan - tax the rich and redistribute to the poor???
Ah, so there IS one of you here. LOL...
Ha! There's always at least one, yes. Frankly, it's much too boring "over there", because even they recognize their own kind are mostly too stupid to conduct a civilized debate. They will never admit it publicly, of course, but they crave the truth as much as we do. That's somewhat encouraging, really.
Can't argue with those that I agree with. That does get boring.
This whole approach to answering the question is wrong. Perhaps even the question itself is wrong. It is not a matter of why people were laid off in the past, but of how many people would be employed tomorrow if all projects currently delayed due to government regulations were green-lighted.
So what has happened in the past has no bearing on what will happen tomorrow...is that what you're saying?
What I am saying is the reasosn for layoffs and the reasons to delay expansion are different. No reason at all that they are subject to the same reasoning. Also, only some industries are affected by regulations, but all are affected by a down-turn in demand. So any real data comparisons are swamped by noise.
"...regulatory uncertainty is a canard invented by Republicans that allows them to use current economic problems to pursue an agenda..."
So, once again the FACTS prove what liars the GOP (& their democratic collaborators) are, and whose side they really are on - and it's not the side of WE THE PEOPLE!! VOTE THEM OUT IN 2012!
Next election will be a major battle. Those so called votes that will save our future are rapidly being redistricted. That means the GOP and their allies are busy dismantling the votes we depend on. Group of Pigs will leverage the election on those that don't vote. Voter registration scams, photo ID's, proof of citizenship, and every other slimy regulation they can intimidate the electorate with. Yeah right, if you cant win an election honestly win it dishonestly, ring any bells?
Those votes that put us up over the top in the last election will be eliminated by Disenfranchising large blocks of voters. Florida, Alabama, Kansas come to mind. No the GOP cannot do it alone, they need donors to make it happen, Koch Bros, Freedom Founders and every other right wing Christian Evangelical nut job organizations in the USA. They have lots of $ for the cause. Better be ready to go to battle cause it aint over yet. If you think we saw the worst of their dirty trix in the last election, well think again.
To be fair, you must also look at other effects brought on by the deregulation.
All this data is false on the face of it. It's 'fair' to say that none of it is valid.
Other effects? You mean, like clean air? Or clean water? Or consumer safety?
The data is false, Terry? Easy to say. Now tell the world economy to get up and walk.
These charts deal with a serious issue in statistics.
Enumerative data vs. analytic studies.
To do an analytic study, a study which connects the data gathered with the 'cause' of the data, is a VERY complex undertaking.
Enumerative data gathering, displaying things that happened at the same time, do not, indeed CANNOT show a causal relationship.
I write this note because it is the very first time I've noticed something related to Maddow which actually 'lacks' any reasoning.
The problem with the Republican claims is that they lack analytic validity of any kind.
Agreed.
The problem with THIS post, is that it claims to refute that lack of analytic validity by displaying the very same LACK of analytic validity.
Usually, I agree with everything I see related to Rachel, but THIS post evinces a HUGE problem. First, a problem of reporting research from data as causal in order to mislead people. Second, it shows the fact that neither the public viewing the charts, NOR the people who gathered any of the data, have any friggin' clue how to make data gathering and reporting 'valid'.
That means, sadly, a LOT of decision making goes on based on utterly false data and horrible understanding.
A historical equivalent can be summed up as, 'your religion is different from mine. The world will be a better place once we destroy all you non-belivers'. The first issue being 'what is 'a better place', the second being, 'we've measured the world as it is now, and later it will better having gotten rid of you'.
All patently false. All dependent on all these believers, on both sides, being ignorant of the valid use of reason, logic, and mathematics.
In an attempt to set this post apart from the rest of the crap we all have to read, I'm including reference links to knowledge that, once gained, may improve your understanding of the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_and_enumerative_statistical_studies
http://eight2late.wordpress.com/2008/12/02/enumeration-or-analysis-a-note-on-the-abuse-of-statistics-in-project-management-research/
-Terry
p.s.: By the way, based on this same theory, you should tip your wait-staff up front.
p.s.s.: Yes, I do wish I worked for the Maddow show.
Outstanding point.
While correlation is a lousy way to prove causation, lack of correlation is a very good way to cast serious doubt on a causative hypothesis, and a negative correlation is a very heavy burden for an hypothesis to lift.
So the Republican hypothesis that tax increases reduce employment and tax cuts create jobs, well, let's just say they may need to bring some better arguments to the table.
Terry, it seems to me that you are asking for the impossible - we cannot conduct randomized controlled trials of hundreds of US-sized countries to different tax structures. There aren't enough countries to do that kind of study, and if there were, they wouldn't consent to us telling them how to run their economies.
What Rachel presents is a reasonable approach to summarizing economic data: Republicans claim that we need to lower taxes on the rich in order to improve the economy, but the best available data show that they are exactly wrong.
When we raised taxes on the rich, the economy got better. When we reduced taxes on the rich, the economy got worse. It is as close to an experimental test as you can get with economies the size of the United States - something there is only one of.
i have a question when you go a store to buy something do you buy the most expensive thing or do you buy the same product for a lesser price if your answer is yes then what is the difference when companies do the same. i would prefer them to stay here
the problem is they're not staying here, they can pay slave wages in China. It's like saying you can pay a penny or a dollar for an item but you don't have any money in your pocket so no one buys anything and soon you don't need to make anymore penny items.
Well, that kind of depends. Since we're not talking about two goods in the same store but rather two different stores 10,000 miles apart there just might be some other considerations.
Read Krugman's work on trade and economic clusters. The USA currently has some trade advantages that make it worth employing people in the USA. However, as manufacturing shifts to other regions it becomes more practical to also shift design, research, finance, etc. there as well.
If we want our great-grandchildren to be doing something other than what the USA is uniquely suited to do (raise cattle, corn, and soybeans) we'd best not be complacent about shipping jobs elsewhere.
Fear, uncertainty and unemployment trickle down -- never wealth. Wealth only travels laterally from one rich person to another.
People ignore that 1,500,000 illegal aliens have left the US, and that reverse immigration began in 2007. This has left hundreds of thousands of dwellings unoccupied with no hope of collecting rent or paying mortgages for about a decade.
These people used to buy things in the US.
That departure collapsed the housing market, and this began in California after China began investing in Mexico to build factories. California has the largest number of illegal immigrants.
These missing illegal immigrants were responsible for about $15 billion of economic stimulus every year.
The steady population increased caused by illegal immigrants was responsible for the California real estate boom from 1993 through 2007.
China put an end to US economic growth by stimulating the Mexican economy.
This is why China has the only economy that was not impacted by the recession.
People need to sober up and start paying attention to facts instead of fantasy.
TeaGOP smoke and mirrors.
It's all about increasing the bottom line for corporations and the excuse of regulations or taxes causing problems is just smoke and mirrors to divert the low-information voters from the actual facts that don't support the TeaGOP cause.
People forget what cause the Great Depression.
A financial crisis has followed each major piece of racist legislation.
These patterns are like tree rings.
White supremacists gained control of both houses of congress and the presidency during the 1920s, and they decided to re-designate Native American citizens as Mexicans and forcibly immigrate them to Mexico beginning in 1924. This created the need to show a birth certificate, and birth certificates were not issued to Native Americans.
Native American people owned real estate, so real estate dropped as vacancy rates increased. The former occupants stopped paying rent and mortgage when they were forced out of the country. The military and law enforcement forced hundreds of thousands of Native Americans onto train cars bound for Mexico at gun-point beginning in winter 1929. That collapsed the price of real estate across most of the southwestern United States, which began to ripple across the country.
Banks were already in trouble, but about 6 months after those Native Americans began being sent to Mexico, banks had to do a margin call on stock speculators when real estate loans went into foreclosure and the money could not be recovered from property sales. This forced most wall street traders to sell massive amounts of stock in fall 1929. The difficulty is that the stock market did contain the amount of excess money required by banks.
There are only two ways to get loans - banks and wall street. This collapsed both financial systems together.
This ethnic cleansing collapsed the economy on Black Thursday, October 24, 1929.
The ensuing panic caused consumers to stop purchasing things that were not absolutely essential, such as food. That collapsed the job market.
About 2 years later, a major drought began in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, and Colorado. Mexican Repatriation had extracted so much money from the economy that the state governments were unable to deal with the crisis and Washington was unwilling to assist farming states, so many starving people migrated to the east and west coast.
William Randolph Hearst was instrumental in the downfall of the economy, and his newspapers blamed the economic collapse on farmers and illegal immigrants, which was a big fat lie. The difficulty is that uneducated people believe lies when you repeat a lie often enough. P.T. Barnum used this phenomenon to become wealthy.
The same thing happened in Germany at the same time for the same reason, and the outcome was World War II.
Temporary work visas used to cost about $18 at all border crossings into the US. Aside from Chinese, there were no immigrant quotas until the 1920s.
Native peoples used to routinely migrate north/sound across the Sonoran desert that runs along the Mexico/US border until the 1920s. The difficulty is that no Native American people were ever allowed to become citizens despite birthright because of the Naturalization Act of 1870.
Native people born west of the Mississippi river were considered "hostile" after the US Army killed all the buffalo Native Americans used for food. Starving indians often killed ranch cattle grazing on native lands. This is the reason that Mexican Repatriation focused on deporting "hostile" Native Americans out of the US.
Migrant farm labor existed for hundreds of years before the US drew the border, and native laborers routinely traveled north/south following the seasons.
Wind the clock forward about 70 years.
These are the exact same kind of events that triggered World War II.
Can you say Oh My God!!!?
Tinkle-down economics are a myth. The forces that drive growth are only obliquely related to the tax structure. The main problem today is globalization compounding the extra slow recovery from a very severe recession.